Origins: Alice
by Rodwen Fefalas
Summary: Alice wasn't born a vampire, but she was born with the gift of foresight and in the early 1900s, this landed her in an institution. When she meets a kind young man, she sees her ticket to freedom without considering that there might also be a price.
1. Chapter 1

Alice was torn away from her mother. She could remember that—in fact, she remembered it very well every day. She got torn away from her mother in the same way that she was torn away from her bed every morning and torn away from the electric chair every afternoon. The times in between were some of the worst she could remember.

She could see the doctors hovering over her head in her dreams. Their glasses reflected the light from the emergency table and made them hard to distinguish from one another. Why did there have to be so many doctors? She couldn't even remember what they talked about. All she knew was that she needed to escape from them, but she didn't know just how she would—or could—do that.

The place Alice was trapped was the only thing she had a clear memory of. The building had high brick walls and torrents like in a castle. She remembered, in flashes of vague memories, thinking it was a castle when they first showed her into it. They'd called her a princess and said every princess needed a place to call home. They told her that this one was meant to be hers.

She'd liked the lawn. It was green and lush and she asked if she could go running across it. The woman who held her hand—the woman who had a black car, she remembered, and had a firm grip on her small hand, and had a tight bun on the back of her head—laughed and told her no, she couldn't. That grass wasn't to play on. It was meant to be very pretty, but she wasn't supposed to play on it. Alice had asked if there was anywhere she could play. The woman didn't answer her for a long time, and when she did, her voice was terse.

"You won't be playing a whole lot in this place," she said in a tone that told Alice the conversation was ended. That night, she was shown to her room, and then to the dining area, where she was met with a lot of blank faces. This was what scared Alice to begin with. This was what told Alice that the building wasn't a castle, and if it was, that the king wasn't afraid of hurting his subjects and that everyone was either a prisoner or a slave to his ruling. That was the start of her being truly afraid.

After they showed her the dining area—a long stretch of tiled floor on the first floor of the building with high windows and endless rows of chairs at long tables—they took her into the Observatory. She sat here, in a white room without anything but a chair and a lot of mirrored walls, for a long time. Nothing happened the first day. She was glad for it, although she wrapped her thin arms around her chest and shivered in the blanket of a robe they'd given her. It itched her everywhere and she could almost feel parts of the fibers cutting into her skin. Her underwear didn't feel like adequate protection.

"How long do I have to sit in here?" she called when no one came to talk to her on the first day.

The door swung open on less than oiled hinges, screaming into her ears and making her grind her teeth together. A man walked in in long doctor's robes and shining glasses that reflected the light and wouldn't let her see his face.

"As long as it takes, my friend," he said in a growl of a voice.

Alice shivered again and stared at him. She started to curl her toes together for warmth, but she wasn't sure if she wanted him to see that she was afraid. She didn't want to show anyone here that she was afraid—it didn't seem like the right thing to do. They reminded her of the bullies at school—showing them fear only meant bad things for everybody involved. "As long as it takes for what?" she asked.

The doctor smiled and nodded his head. "As long as it takes for you to confess to your witchcraft, my dear."

Alice gasped in her shivers. Her teeth knocked together. She wasn't sure that she liked this. "I'm not a witch," she said in a small voice between her teeth. She didn't sound convinced and she knew that if she wasn't convincing herself, she certainly wouldn't convince him.

The doctor smiled and laughed, walking away.

"I'm not a witch!" she called again. This time, she felt a sting in the back of her throat and another one in the space behind her eyes. She didn't want to think about crying, but it seemed like it would be inevitable.

They did let her out of the room eventually. She was sent to dinner—and by that time, her stomach was growling so hard that she thought it would never end. She wanted to vomit with the force of its demands—where she sat with the others who had blank faces and wondered how long it would be until she looked just like that, too.

Her soup was cold and her bread was stale. The water she drank stank of the sewers and she wasn't sure she'd be able to keep any of it down. She didn't know if she wanted to.

I'd almost rather starve, she told herself as she walked back to her room, her meal unfinished. Almost. On her way out, she looked around for fruit, but finding nothing, she stole back her small hunk of stale bread before one of the other patrons could eat it and wandered back to her place.

She almost got lost to her room, seeing as the doors of the building all looked the same—flat white wood with a gold plaque engraved with a number that was nailed to the top of them. When she passed one door, she thought she recognized its painting, that there might've been something familiar about the way the paint strokes had been smeared on. She entered and fell into her cot with relief, chewing on her bread before she fell asleep.

That night began the terrors. She was woken up by her door flying open and a group of three people flying in at her. They took her by her shoulders and lifted her up from the bed, shaking her hard and staring at her with wide, white eyes.

"DID YOU TAKE THE BREAD?" they demanded. "DID YOU TAKE THE BREAD FROM THE DINING AREA?"

Alice shook all over and nodded her head. She couldn't nod fast enough to get them to go away. "Yes! I ate it. I w-was hungry!" she said in a strangled voice.

The person holding her let one shoulder go and slapped her once before she turned away and all three of the people ran out, closing the door with a bang, letting Alice fall back onto her bed with a bump and wanting to cry as she twisted the hem of her robe between her hands.

"What is happening here?" she whispered to the empty room. The desk and chair on the other side of the bed would say nothing, and the bars on the window, which shone in the moonlight, reminded her that she wasn't getting out anytime soon.

Over the next few days, she found a ritual to the building's preference for torture and settled into it rather quickly. They liked to give their victims food in the morning, torture them throughout the day with "therapy sessions" that ranged from Chinese water torture to electroshock therapy, and then stuff them at the end with bad foods and stale waters. For fifteen minutes every day, they were allowed outside when it wasn't snowing or raining (or that's what the woman had said when she was explaining the nature of the place to Alice). These times came too slowly for the girl to be happy with, but she enjoyed them when they did and liked to sit at the end of the short field that surrounded the building, and which was surrounded by a high wire fence meant to keep them in—and other people out. She didn't have to be told that to know precisely what it was.

This was how she met James.

She didn't know who he was at first. The first time she saw him, he was sitting far enough away from the fence that she could just barely make him out. He was smiling at her when she caught his eye, and she stared at him for a long time before he moved away. By the time he had gone, the bell rang and everyone had to go back inside.

The second time, he was standing closer. There were trees surrounding the fence surrounding the yard, and he was sitting under these when she left to return to the building. He didn't look at her for long this time. He was reading a book and watching her over the rim—she could feel his eyes on her even though he didn't acknowledge her presence. She wanted to say hi to him—or to say something—but she didn't think he was close enough to hear her and she didn't want to disturb him if he really was as engrossed in his reading as he wanted people to think.

When the finally spoke, it had been a bad day. There had been electroshock therapy waiting for Alice upon her finishing with breakfast, and it hadn't gone well. The doctors muttered to one another around her when they ceased to be torturing her, but they never said what they were looking for aside from some sort of sign that she was a witch. But she'd known that from the beginning and it didn't occur to her now that there would be anything for them to suspect that she was.

Afternoon came slowly, and so did her time outdoors, but on her way over, she had a vision. She could see the boy from the outside staring at her, only this time he was close to the fence, and they were holding hands. She could see a kindness in his eyes just before the vision faded. Alice had to force herself not to run over to her spot when they were finally released to the outside.

Just as she'd seen in her vision, the boy stood there, at the fence, with one hand wrapped around the wire. Alice threw a look over her shoulder to make sure that none of the nurses were watching before she put her hand on top of his with a great big smile.

"You're a special girl, aren't you?" the boy asked in a deep voice. She liked the sound of it. It was even more pleasant than she'd imagined it would be.

"They seem to think so. They've locked me up in here, but I don't know why."

The boy smiled and nodded. "Would you like to get out?" he asked, his voice low and conspiratorial.

Alice reddened and glanced over her shoulder at the place. "I don't think that's a good idea. I don't even know you."

The boy shook his head. "That wasn't the question. Would you like to get out?" he asked again.

Alice nodded. "More than anything."

The boy smiled again. It dimpled his cheeks, softening the roughness of his face. "Then that's what you should do. My name is James, by the way."

Alice felt her stomach growing warm and knew that it had nothing to do with the waves of electricity that had been pounding through her not moments ago. Part of her thought that she shouldn't be alive and another part of her thought that she shouldn't be standing up. She wondered briefly if that was what they were looking for: some sign that she would be able to stand after her treatment. If that was it, then they were right, she thought, at least to some extent. She just hoped they wouldn't figure it out.

"I'm Alice," she said, her voice a whisper. James nodded. "Alice is a pretty name. I'm going to get you out of here, Alice."

She balked and heard the bell start to ring. Her heart began to hurt in her chest. She didn't want to go back inside. It didn't even feel like it'd been fifteen minutes yet.

Maybe somebody did something and they cut our time short to punish us, she wondered to herself.

"But I don't even know you! How are you going to do that?" she asked as she started to walk away.

Her hand swung forward and he caught it between the wire. His fingers had callouses and they scratched her palm, but his smile was kind and his eyes glittered.

"Just trust me, okay?" he whispered. The touch was gone in the next minute, as though it'd never been there, and her hand fell back to her side as the sound of the bell grew louder and closer and more insistent.

"Alice, it's time to go inside!" one of the nurses was calling.

Alice nodded and pried her eyes away from the place where James had stood. She watched him disappear behind a tree and wondered just how much time it would take before they found him and his plans for her were ruined. "I'm coming, okay?" she called back.

A hand descended on her arm and she looked up. One of the night nurses, a burly old woman who was taller and bigger than everyone else, had her hand around Alice's arm and had started to pull her away towards the building.

"You're going to come NOW," she said, yanking Alice through the door. The nurse walked her all the way back through the building and nearly flung her into her room. For the first time, Alice didn't mind. As long as she was hidden in here, they couldn't see the hope on her face as she pressed her nose to the bars on her window.

She was going to escape.

She didn't know what James would do to keep his promise. The days swung by like the ball of a great pendulum, back and forth with slow and predictable ease that felt like they were starting to grind on her nerves. She could feel herself losing herself. She could feel everything losing its grip on reality. She didn't want to forget about James, but the days of electroshock and bad food and low weight and no exercise and blank faces were starting to claw at her conscious and she couldn't think straight anymore.

The day came when they allotted her a sponge bath. She didn't like these. The water always felt too cold and she never thought she would walk away clean from them. Her usual sponge nurse wasn't there, so they told her that another nurse—an intern at the building—had taken the old one's place, and she would use him for the night. Alice nodded, her chin bumping her chest, and they left her to unchange.

She disrobed and sat on the cold table, waiting for the nurse. She didn't hear the door open or the basin brought into her. She only seemed to wake up when she felt the cold drip of water running down her back and the equally cold sponge running cold circles across her skin.

"This is hurtful, isn't it?" a familiar voice whispered.

She nodded. "Very," she said. She didn't have the energy to talk and her tongue felt like lead in her mouth. It had been too long without speaking that didn't include screaming or crying from the torture.

The cold hands placed themselves on her shoulders and the nurse's breath tickled her ear. "Are you sure you still want to get out?"

Alice blinked and looked up. The nurse lowered his mask and James's face smiled down at her. She smiled and tried to laugh, but her lungs hurt too much.

"I told you I would get you out of here. Let's get you dressed," he said. He helped her arms into her sleeves, guiding her hands through the holes of her robe. They slipped the material over her shoulders and slid her feet into small shoes before he peeked out the door and led her away down the hall.

"Quickly," he said in a small voice. Together, they hobbled down the hallway. Everything was blissfully empty, and Alice started to laugh at the ease at which they were leaving, but James slapped a hand over her face and she knew she had to be quiet. When they heard a nurse's voice, they slipped down another hall and away until they were out of earshot again, and before long, they were flying down the labyrinth of halls leading them towards the front door. These were the ones Alice didn't know all that well, having not been through here except for her first day, and the only people she knew who would pass through them more than once were the ones who were entering or leaving the building completely (and weren't staff or administration).

James led her out into the night and the cold air bit at Alice's covered toes through the thin slipper material. He let her laugh a little bit as he led her down the road and out of the gate, which he unlocked and swung open with all of the ease of an undercover spy. They walked a short way before he set her down and they laughed together on the side of the road.

"That was the best night I've had in a long time!" Alice said in a voice that was too loud for her ears.

James nodded beside her. "Same for me!" He turned and looked at her, his eyes glowing. "And it's about to get even better."

Alice frowned, but warmed when he rolled over to her and pressed his lips to the sides of her face. She started to relax when she felt a pricking in her neck, but when she went to push him off, he wouldn't go away. She began to feel her skin contract, his fingers biting into her skin, and an alarm went off in her head. Something wasn't right here.

She began to scream.


	2. Chapter 2

Alice woke up again after what felt like a very long time. Sucking in a sharp breath, she sat up as her setting came into view: she lay on a low bed in a lukewarm room filled with half-light that came in from a window to her left. As she breathed, her nose tingled with the smell of burning wood and she looked to her right to find a fireplace glowing with low-burning coals. The air around her was cold, but Alice shivered despite that and her hands trembled as she pushed the sheets off of her legs. She still wore the clothes from the institution, but the sight of them eased the pounding of her heart in the midst of her unfamiliar location.

Steeling herself, she dropped her feet to the ground and made her way to the door where it stood across the room from her. The second she touched it, the handle turned and it flew open. Alice jumped backwards, biting back a scream.

"Hey, hey, it's okay!" a young woman with auburn hair said as she entered the room, a pitcher of water in hand.

Alice fell back towards the bed, putting enough distance between herself and the woman so that, if she needed to, she could fight the woman off. "Who are you?" she asked. "What do you want?"

The woman studied Alice for a second. "I'm Muriel. I'm the one who brought you here."

Alice swallowed hard, clenching her fists at her sides. "S-so, what? You stopped him?"

Muriel shook her head and the slight lines of her otherwise youthful face turned down. "No, I'm afraid not. He turned you before I had the chance to stop him."

Alice gave a hard shudder. "Turned me? Wh-what are you—" She trailed off as she tried to think of everything that that could mean.

Muriel gave her a small smile, one filled with sympathy. "I'm afraid it means you're a vampire now."

Alice stared at her for a long time before she laughed a little. "What? That's crazy. There's no such thing."

Muriel stepped forward until half of her body stood in the sunlight, the smile never leaving her face. "I know it's hard to process," she said, putting the pitcher down and rolling up her sleeves. Alice watched her every movement. "But please understand, I can help you," she said, holding out both wrists for inspection. Alice stepped closer for a better look, but she didn't have to. A second later, Muriel's skin was sparkling.

"You're kidding. Vampires don't sparkle," she whispered, but she could hear the disbelief in her own voice.

Muriel shook her head again. "I'm so sorry, Alice. I didn't want this for you—or anyone. I wasn't able to stop him in time."

Alice put a hand to her throat as she stared at Muriel's arms. A second later, she joined the woman in the small sunlight and held up her fingers. When they glittered, she dropped her hand again, tears brimming her eyes, and covered her mouth to stop a scream from escaping. She could feel Muriel's eyes on her face the entire time.

"I bet you're thirsty, aren't you," the woman said in a soothing voice that reminded Alice of her mother's.

Alice swallowed and shook her head, closing her eyes. "Nope," she whispered, but even as she uttered the word, a burning sensation worked its way up her throat. She heard a scraping sound and when she opened her eyes again, Muriel held up the pitcher.

"Would you like something to drink? You're a newborn, Alice. You're going to be very hungry for a long while. You're going to crave drink the way a child craves sugar, but you're going to learn to control it. While we talk, though, I want you eating something. It will help your mind clear. Do you understand?"

Sniffling hard, Alice nodded. She could detect the smell coming from the pitcher and she didn't have to ask what it was—they drew enough blood from her at the institution for her to recognize it anywhere. Alice fell back a step as she watched Muriel turn out the door and come back with a pair of tin cups, pouring the thick substance into one and then the other.

"I don't want that," she whispered when Muriel handed a cup to her. She could see the light glint with a pinkish hue on top of the liquid.

Muriel didn't turn away. "You won't feel better without it. I imagine your throat is burning?"

Alice held the woman's gaze and clenched her jaw. Muriel nodded.

"That's what I thought. Drink. Sit down."

Alice took the cup. The blood felt heavy and the cup seemed heavier still. Lifting the substance to her lips, she scrunched and then held her nose while she tipped her drink into her mouth. As the first taste hit her tongue, she wanted to gag, but after a second's consideration, she kept drinking. Instead of fowl and cold, the blood tasted heady and warm. Her burning throat soothed so quickly that she almost didn't believe the burning had been real. Her stomach even seemed to swell with the slight gorge. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so full.

The cup was gone and seconds and she handed it back to Muriel, who only poured another drink for her. "Isn't this enough?" Alice asked, wiping her lips with the back of her hand and forgetting all decorum.

Muriel shook her head. "You're a newborn. The more blood you have in you now, the better," Muriel said, seating herself on the edge of the bed. Cradling her drink, Alice followed her, taking her time with her second glass. "Now, I'm sure you have questions for me."

Alice nodded, taking a small sip. If possible, the second cup tasted better than the first. "You said you tried to stop James. How did you know about him? How did you know about me?"

Muriel's brow furrowed and she took a quick drink. "James is what we in the vampire world call a tracker. The hunt is his life and his passion. He spends a lot of time looking for delightful young women with something special about them and when he finds one, he chases."

"So how do you fit into all this? Did he bite you, too?"

Muriel shook her head. "He was interested in my sister for a while, though. That was after I was turned. My sister was still human and I watched over from the shadows. I saw him following her one day, and then another, and finally a third before I pulled her off his scent. It was hard, nearly impossible to do, but I did it. I've been watching him ever since."

"Why did he follow her?"

Muriel shrugged. "She was beautiful? And strong. She had a willpower all her own and I think it tantalized him. He left afterwards, though. I'm not sure why. My guess is he found someone else."

Alice made a face. "Yeah. Me." To her surprise, Muriel wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"He won't come after you again. I promise. You've already been turned, so the point of the hunt is all but null and void for him. I think we can consider you safe." Muriel smiled a little bit, which lightened the load in Alice's heart, but even as they talked, something tugged at her.

"That still doesn't explain how you knew about me. You even knew my name."

"I was following James. I caught sight of his trail—he's quite predictable when he wants to be—and it looked so much like the one left by him when he was after my sister that I had to discover what it was for myself. He found you at the institution the way he found my sister at the town square, and he kept coming back. I could hear you two talking and I heard the other patients talking with you, as well. The day he led you away, I followed and attacked him when you started screaming."

Alice frowned, pulling out from under Muriel's arm. "So—he's not the one who changed me?"

Muriel shook her head and Alice thought she could detect the tired lines of her friend's face growing heavier. "I did that. I did it because if I didn't, he would still be after you. Now that you're like him—a vampire—he has no reason to hurt you. I'm sorry, but this was the only way. Unless you wish to be dead?"

Alice balked, but she had to think a second before she said anything. "I'm not sure, really," she whispered. After another moment, Muriel took the cup from her hands and stood up.

"I think it's time you went back to sleep. You need to make a full recovery if you're going to survive," she said, taking the pitcher and turning towards the door. Alice watched the woman move away and nodded a goodnight to her when Muriel uttered the phrase. She didn't feel sleepy—she felt like thinking.

She wasn't sure when she fell asleep, but before she knew it, Alice was dreaming. In it, a tall man stood before her with a slow, easy smile on his face. He pushed a hand through his light hair and nodded to her before turning and walking down a street and into a diner whose name she only recognized as saying "Philly" across half of it. Alice woke up with a smile on her face that changed when she heard a scream down the hall.

Jumping from the bed, she tore out of the room. The hall was dark and long, but the screams pulled her to the right. Racing across the cold floors, she made another hard turn into a different room where two people were locked in a tangle of arms and legs on a canopied bed.

"Help!" she heard a woman cry.

"Muriel?" Alice called.

Everyone froze and then a loud SNAP! filled the room, followed by a heavy _thump!_ The person on top sat up and Alice's blood ran cold as she recognized the long blonde ponytail laying on the back of a dark jacket.

James.

Alice backed out of the room as he stood up and turned to her. Although his eyes were filled with hate, it was the object in his hands that called Alice's attention and sent her stomach roiling. Muriel's severed head stared back at her, the vampire's hair in a long, unkempt braid, her eyes and mouth still wide and open with terror.

"It's nice to see you again," James whispered before tossing the head onto the bed behind him.

Alice raced away from the room. She got barely five feet before his hand clamped onto her shoulder. With a cry, she fell back and landed on the ground. His hand twisted itself in her hair as he all but dragged her outside, tossing her onto the sidewalk. The world around them was dark, but not enough that she could see the woods surrounding the small log cabin, its windows dark and almost invisible against the black sky. James hovered over her, his eyes like two hard, white lights in his otherwise shadowed face. They could've been malicious parts of the vast constellations that flickered in and out of life in the sky above her.

"Now run away. Don't ever come back," he whispered.

She lay there, trembling underneath his gaze, until his stamped his foot next to her. Alice scrambled to her feet, kicking up a small trail of dirt, and scampered away, forgetting about the cold night air and the soft soles of her bare feet getting scraped against the earth and the fact that she had no idea where she was going. She just raced as far as she could, trying to escape the laughing sound of his voice.


End file.
